Author Archive

10 Reasons Why Geeks Make the Best Mates

February 15, 2012

Definition of a geek: (gēk) noun. slang. An expert or enthusiast in an analytical field such as technology. Once used as an insult, it is now considered a badge of honor among technical people.

Loving Geeks

Valentine’s Day has come and gone.

Hurray!

Perhaps no day tests relationships like Valentine’s Day. Society respectfully suggests that we better demonstrate our love or else risk dire consequences. And, it can be a struggle if you are a romantically challenged bloke like me.

Should you chose the wilted red roses or the petunias? Which box of candy does your mate really prefer? Yes, your marriage may hinge on your choice of white or dark chocolate.

Well, the hoopla has come and gone and luckily we survived.

Now it’s time to answer the real questions about love, the ones that dig deep down into the soul and reveal the truth of your relationship:

Q: Is your significant other a geek?
Q: Do you know a geek?
Q: Are you a geek?

If you answered “yes” to any of these, then we have the crucial scoop for you: Discover the top 10 Reasons Geeks Make the Best Mates

2011 almost done. Phew!!

December 30, 2011

Surmounting IT challenges with Citrix solutionsThe year was a big one for us here at Citrix Online. How about for you? What were your IT and support challenges and accomplishments for the year?

We were sure busy. We rolled out our new website and pushed our integration of fast tech support and 24/7 IT monitoring in GoToManage. Delivered on a free GoToAssist Express iPad app that’s a crowd pleaser. Issued a new app integrating Salesforce, the leading CRM solution, with GoToAssist Corporate. We upgraded GoToAssist Express with a beta version of unattended access to Mac® computers. And, we expanded GoToAssist Corporate with new functionality to support mobile devices.

However, before we dive into 2012, we thought we all ought to take a few moments to reflect, relax and laugh. To help you, here’s some amusing videos thought up by witty and prolific IT blogger Brian Madden. Enjoy!

Best wishes for 2012 from the GoToAssist crew.

The Power of One: Why Customer Service Can’t Ignore Social Media

December 29, 2011

Dave Carroll & Catriona Wallace

With over 11 million YouTube hits, Dave Carroll’s song “United Breaks Guitars” resulted in a 10% decline in United Airlines’ share price. It also demonstrated to the world the power of social media as a customer resolution channel.

Join this live webinar with Dr. Catriona Wallace, director of Fifth Quadrant, as she speaks with international social media sensation, acclaimed public speaker and musician Dave Carroll.

Date: Wednesday, January 11

Time: 10 AM (PST) / 1 PM (EST)

Speakers:
Dave Carroll, Musician and Public Speaker
Catriona Wallace, Director, Fifth Quadrant

This is a rare opportunity to hear a legend in social media share important lessons and firsthand insights on how leading companies must compete through exceptional customer experiences.

Attend this interactive webinar to learn:
• Why organizations can’t ignore social media as a customer service channel
• What the power of one person means to us as consumers and employees
• What organizations should consider when implementing a social strategy
• And more…

Trick or Treat – Share Your IT Horror Stories

October 27, 2011

Scary IT Stories. Photo courtesy of the Pug Father and Flickr.

Halloween is here!

And to get you into the spirit, we’re inviting you to read some classic IT horror stories from years gone by that might send a shiver or two down your spine.

Although bats, ghosts and goblins usually don’t find their way into these chilly tales, you’ll be on the edge of your seat as you read these unbelievable, yet true accounts from IT pros like you.

Visit the Facebook page of GoToManage, GoToAssist’s sister product, and enjoy these classics:
• The case of the mysterious “dust bunny” and the dead PC
• Why one IT manager no longer kayaks
• How “Fabio” saved the day
• And many more that will make you cringe and chuckle

Plus, I invite you to share your “scariest” tech support story with us ‒ your story could be featured on the GoToManage Facebook homepage for all to enjoy.

Read ‘em now!

Happy Halloween!

The SupportIndustry.com Leadership Webinars Series

October 7, 2011

Rich Gallagher

How to Hire, Lead and Motivate Your All-Star Support Team

In this three-part webinar series, industry expert Rich Gallagher will discuss the key (and often unspoken) steps to successfully hiring, leading and motivating your team of support professionals. Rich presents a creative and highly effective process that will dramatically increase your odds of hiring the right person every time.

Rich will also show why support leaders succeed or fail in fast-paced customer contact environments and how you can harness the diverse personalities of your support team for better performance.

Attend this interactive webinar series to learn:
• How to screen, attract and retain top support talent
• How to lead your support teams
• Team building in a support center
Registering for one or all of the events is easy – see below for detailed information on each of these webinars.
________________________________________

Webinar Part I: Hiring for Great Service: How to Screen, Attract and Retain Top Support Talent
Thursday, October 13, 2011 – 11 AM (PT) / 2 PM (ET)

How do you select top support professionals and avoid hiring mistakes – and, more important, how do you create a repeatable process that consistently chooses the best people?

Join SupportIndustry.com as we present a creative and highly effective process that will dramatically increase your odds of hiring the right person every time.

Attend this interactive webinar to learn:
• How to implement a team interview process
• Creative ways to assess problem-solving skills and attitude
• How to build your “brand” as an employer
• Keys to retention ‒ hiring well and hiring less

________________________________________

Webinar Part II: Leading Support Teams: The Mechanics

Thursday, November 3, 2011 – 11 AM (PT) / 2 PM (ET)

If you lead a support team, your day-to-day practices as a leader are likely to have the single biggest impact on the morale, turnover and performance of your support team.

Join SupportIndustry.com as we share the many important and, at times, surprising ways that support leaders succeed or fail in fast-paced customer contact environments.

Attend this interactive webinar to learn:
• Good metrics, bad metrics – how to measure performance
• How to make your team part of a greater whole
• Training that works – creating an environment for collaboration & learning
• Benefits of leadership on the team level

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Webinar Part III: Your Cast of Characters: Team Building in a Support Center

Thursday, December 8, 2011 – 11 AM (PT) / 2 PM (ET)

Your support team is like a family – in every good and bad sense of the word! And understanding its “family” dynamics is often the hidden key to reducing conflict and improving performance.

Join SupportIndustry.com as we present how to understand the interpersonal forces that drive your support team and how to harness its diverse personalities for better performance.

Attend this interactive webinar to learn:
• How conflicts arise and how to short circuit them
• Front line/back line relationships
• How to speak everyone’s “language”
• Tips and traps for managing different personalities

2011 Trends in Collaborative Support: On-Demand Webinar

October 5, 2011

John Ragsdale, VP of Tech Research at TSIA

Web-collaboration tools have emerged as one of the most popular technologies across all service divisions. This suite of tools – ranging from desktop sharing, collaboration between support reps and even supervisor silent monitoring – is seeing high rates of adoption and planned spending.

Download this free webinar with John Ragsdale, TSIA’s VP of technology research, as he reveals for the first time the new TSIA 2011 survey results, including rate of adoption of web-collaboration tools, satisfaction levels and spending numbers.

View this webinar to discover:

• The ROI of web collaboration for technical support, including metrics impacted
• Key areas of product differentiation
• Why “freeware” increases risk for your organization
• And more…

Learn more about additional webinars from Citrix Online.

Webinar: Drive Customer Satisfaction Up and Costs Down

September 22, 2011

Most support managers are expected to maintain or improve C-SAT scores while reducing expenses. In other words, “do more with less.” This may appear to be impossible – but there actually is a way to achieve both goals.

Join this live webinar with Dave Brown, founder and president of Support Center University, as he shares proven methods that will drive your support organization’s performance to new levels while lowering costs.

Dave will detail industry benchmarking data that shows how customer satisfaction is impacted by specific performance factors. These same factors are the key drivers of cost.

Date: Wednesday, September 28

Time: 10 AM (PDT) / 1 PM (EDT)

During this interactive webinar, you’ll discover:

• The relationship between “time to resolution” and C-SAT
• Why efficiency metrics must be considered together, not separately
• Improvement techniques that maximize benefits to your organization

A Match Made in Heaven? #1 Remote Support + #1 CRM

September 2, 2011

#1 CRM Tool + #1 Support Tool

GoToAssist is very proud to announce the happy union of GoToAssist Corporate with Saleforce, the leading CRM solution.

Now support representatives everywhere can launch support sessions right from their favorite CRM service. With the GoToAssist for Salesforce app, you can start a GoToAssist support session with just one-click from your Saleforce case record. In addition, all session details are automatically captured as Activity History in Salesforce.

The free GoToAssist for Salesforce app is available for your test driving and deployment at the Salesforce AppExchange.

Key benefits:
• Streamline support operations
• Deliver quick, seamless remote support
• Eliminate duplicate data entry – remote-support session log and survey results are automatically saved in Case Activity History

On-Demand Webinar: Watch Demo of GoToAssist for Salesforce

To learn more, download the fact sheet or watch a special recorded webinar with GoToAssist product line director Barry Dacus. Barry demos GoToAssist for Salesforce and answers the audience’s questions in a lively Q and A.

Remoting with the Folks — Useful Tools

September 2, 2011

Conquering the tech generation gap. Photo courtesy of Ollie Crafoord at flickr.

By Niklas Edlinger

I’ve recently made a pretty useful remote support discovery. Despite the fact that my elderly parents are eager to join the computer world (hello Facebook), they aren’t quite the best at navigating computer problems when they arise.

In the past, I’ve tried talking them through issues over the phone (or worse yet, email), which as anyone who has tried knows, is no easy feat.

“My Word has an extra page I can’t get rid of.”

“Have you tried scrolling as far down as you can and then holding backspace?”

“Of course I’ve tried that – the page is still there!”

And so on. I’m always happy to help when I can, but boy can it be frustrating. That’s when I realized remote support is for more than just professionals. One URL and a couple clicks later, I’m viewing their screen, solving the problem painlessly. It’s almost too convenient – soon they won’t even try to figure it out themselves, and that worries me and my free time.

Reuters just published an article on a group of elderly Japanese who formed their own IT support group, called “Computer Grandmas.” That sounds like a fantastic idea to me. I might have to leave that page open on my parents’ screen the next time I remote in.

Google too recognizes the looming tech knowledge gap between us and our elders. They’ve taken a stab at solving it with these easy self-help videos, and they’ve made it fun to send one to Ma or Pa.

Who knows, maybe someday, my mom will be schooling me in the complexities of IT.

BT: Strategies for Optimizing Web Chat in Support Centers

May 19, 2011

Automation, self-service, web chat, remote tech support – these strategic tools are the modern face of customer support. Contact centers continue to adopt novel support channels in a drive to enhance productivity, reduce costs and excel in pleasing customers.

But as Valerie Peay, head of the customer experience team at global communications giant BT, explains in a short video, these tools shouldn’t be understood as simply interchangeable elements. The goal isn’t to simply substitute support channels with lower costs per transactions for those with higher costs.

Case in point is BT’s experimentation with the use of GoToAssist Corporate’s new web-chat support tool FastChat™. BT has been an early and enthusiastic adapter of FastChat. The point of such chat tools, Peay says, is not to replace phone service. Instead, customer contacts centers have to work towards the best dynamic combination.

FastChat interface

Hence BT’s strategic approach to FastChat, GoToAssist’s web-based chat interface that launches instantly without any customer download. BT applied FastChat to the 20,000 customer calls coming into their wholesale division each week.

The rollout of FastChat was part of a targeted approach that sought to “eradicate the reasons to call in the first place,” says Peay.

FastChat, which BT branded as “eChat,” helped BT “move our customers into an e-service environment.” “If you can move them into an online environment,” Peay says, “then you can teach them using chat how to be able to self-serve.”

Of course, BT does not plan to eliminate phone support; they want to keep all communication channels open with their valued customers.

The project under Peay’s team was a smashing success. Incoming calls were cut almost in half from 20,000 a week, with eChat handling approximately 40 percent of those. BT plans to accelerate its deployment and make eChat the primary form of contact with wholesale customers over the next 3 months, in addition to expanding the use of FastChat to another 5 BT divisions.

BT’s research into customer experience also reveals an “absolutely fantastic” 20 percent boost in customer experience. As part of BT’s innovative approach to customer service, Peay and her team have continued to drill into the data to see what works by looking at customer surveys and transcripts of the chat session.


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